61–70 of 83 posts
In an odd way, it seems that possible situation might keep the number of miners higher than it would otherwise be.
Bitcoin's price drop might look bad enought to warrant sensational articles, but if you take any bitcoin price chart over the last years (like [1]) and switch it to logarithmic price, it doesn't appear exceptional. The same thing happened in 2013. 1: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts
log charts are misleading because by changing the base and the vertical axis you can make a huge decline look like a blip. but seeing 80% of your money gone is anything but a blip. also there is no guarantee bitcoin will continue to have exponential returns.
which is true of any investment vehicle. You can only look at past performance and future market factors to make predictions, but even with the safest investment methods there is no guarantee.
I may still have some bitcoin, but I certainly hope it becomes worthless. It's turned out to be ridiculously energy-consuming, and it seems to be used mostly for speculation rather than payment. Transactions have become too slow and expensive to be efficient for a payment system. It's entirely possible that cryptocurrencies will be the future, but it won't be bitcoin. It needs to be more efficient and more scalable t…
Sounds like someone hasn't been keeping up with recent bitcoin tech and is merely repeating lines from Dec 2017.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which won't happen since the 'cost' of mining is electricity and hardware costs which for some miners is probably very close to zero. All this is going to do is shuffle out the miners who have no efficiency.
Sounds like an opportunity for someone to get control of more than 50% of mining capacity.
Though if that is an option, I would guess it would be more likely for a coalition of miners to choose to do so before any individual achieves 50%.
I may still have some bitcoin, but I certainly hope it becomes worthless. It's turned out to be ridiculously energy-consuming, and it seems to be used mostly for speculation rather than payment. Transactions have become too slow and expensive to be efficient for a payment system. It's entirely possible that cryptocurrencies will be the future, but it won't be bitcoin. It needs to be more efficient and more scalable t…
Sounds like someone hasn't been keeping up with recent bitcoin tech and is merely repeating lines from Dec 2017.
In fact, any change in bitcoin is unlikely as all parties are hopelessly at odds with each other.
> As I argued, once Bitcoin’s price falls below its cost of mining, the incentive to mine will deteriorate, thrusting bitcoin into a death spiral. When bitcoin appeared it's price was zero, yet people still mined it despite being a clear "worthless" activity.
It was as simple as pressing a button, labelled "Generate" on the original Bitcoin client if I recall, which used your CPU to mine a block of 50 BTC. The button was removed after it started taking more than the time between blocks (10 mins) to mine a block on an average CPU.
Interesting concept that you could simply press a button to generate something that was worth at its peak a few years later US$1M. If you think that sounds like it comes from an old episode of The Twilight Zone you may be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Z... : "One day they receive a mysterious locked box with a button atop it ... a smartly dressed stranger ... [gives them] the key to the box and explains that if they press the button then two things will happen: they will receive $200,000..."
Bitcoin's price drop might look bad enought to warrant sensational articles, but if you take any bitcoin price chart over the last years (like [1]) and switch it to logarithmic price, it doesn't appear exceptional. The same thing happened in 2013. 1: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts
The article is misinformed: I am the first one to jump on Bitcoin's flaws, but this here just reeks of somebody not understanding the protocol: > As I argued, once Bitcoin’s price falls below its cost of mining, the incentive to mine will deteriorate, thrusting bitcoin into a death spiral. The cost of mining adjusts depending on the hash rate , so if nobody is mining the cost of mining goes down until people start mi…
> In that respect, it is more like gold, in that its value is driven to some extent by its desirability and potential uses, but mostly by its cost of mining This is not how prices work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value What matters is how much somebody will pay for an asset (supply and demand) not how much it cost to produce that asset to begin with.
It's actually not that simple, and strangely one of those areas where economics has had a blind spot for a long time. Lots of businesses use cost-plus pricing, which contradicts the econ 101 assumption that you're repeating. Now, one might naively argue that even with cost-plus pricing, the outcome is still the same because businesses who set their price too high will be either outcompeted or just find no demand eith…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like someone hasn't been keeping up with recent bitcoin tech and is merely repeating lines from Dec 2017.
Note Martijn was specificially talking about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still based on proof-of-work and i don't see it changing any time soon. In fact, any change in bitcoin is unlikely as all parties are hopelessly at odds with each other.